The Refugee's Inevitable Impasse

Helen is a musician who came to Norway as a refugee when she was a child; Svend is in the police force. Each year, the two of them spend the same three days in August at a hotel in a town on the Skagerrak coast. Their eleven-year-old relationship is characterised by transience and constancy.

Against a backdrop of the refugee crisis that is so topical now, The Refugee’s Inevitable Impasse describes both the unfathomable ways of love and those of fleeing and living under cover. And how the roles we assume, deliberately or by chance, create conditions for our choices and thus for the directions our lives take.

With his inimitable, economical narrative style, Øystein Lønn demonstrates yet again his great ability to inscribe himself into his age and provide an insightful picture of the complex psychological interactions between people.